Insider transactions for 2003 show multiple option exercises of 50,000 shares of Safeway at $6 a share then immediately selling at market price of about $23-24, netting about $900,000 each time.

From UFCW Local 1036

Safeway’s CEO cuts his salary, but takes sneaky mllionsBurd made $2,209,000 in salary last year. He has announced that he would take 41 percent pay cut, but did not think weâ€™d notice that heâ€™d sneak in about $11 million in new stock options.

KrogerJoseph Pichler CEO, 3.93 million salary. Owns 1.2 million shares. Disposed of about 270,000 shares this year in “non open market” transactions, and exercised options of 80,000 shares at 4.60 (the stock is 19 today). Deep Audit, our resident forensic accountant tells us these shares might have been a gift to someone.

The strike is spreading nationwide.

More than 70,000 grocery workers in Southern California went on strike or were locked out of 859 stores on Sunday. That action came five days after 10,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655 in St. Louis set up pickets at 97 stores operated by three local supermarket chains.

On Monday, another 3,300 workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky voted to strike 44 Kroger stores in that region. The strike was to take effect at midnight.